TAMPIN, Malaysia - It's 3 pm on a normal
weekday in this small town, about 110 kilometers
south of the national capital, and Hafsiah, 9, and
her brother Badrul, 12, are tearing up the stairs
of a three-story shop house to enter a room full
of students eager to learn English.
Many
of the children are still in regular school
uniforms and have not had time to change but they
are ready for another session of learning in a
scene commonplace these days in rural Malaysia,
which is dominated by the country's indigenous
Malays.
So keen are Hafsiah and her
brother, as are many of the other students, that
they have not returned to their homes in nearby
villages for lunch but stayed on in Tampin with
stomachs growling, so they do not miss their
precious English language coaching session.
English, once shunned as the
language of colonialism, is now regarded as the
passport to success in the modern world and is
rapidly replacing Islamic studies and the
sciences.
"My parents say English is the
key to the future and that we have to master it,"
Hafsiah said after her session. "But [English] is
so strange to the tongue."
Apparently, the
difficulties that Malays have in competing in a
rapidly globalizing world is being attributed by
the older generation to their failure to master
English, and even to turning their backs on the
language in 1970 in a wave of nationalism.
Malays form slightly more than 50% of
Malaysia's 23 million people. The economically
dominant ethnic Chinese form 22% and are
concentrated in the urban centers where the
English language has survived better. Indians, who
form another 7% of the population, are also
largely urban.
The frenzy to catch up with
English in rural Malaysia is more than just
palpable and nowadays second only to the craze for
English football and the popular "Malaysian Idol"
contest, a reality-type TV show.
Signs of
the frenzy are everywhere. Bookshops are stacked
high with volumes of dry English grammar, and
these include familiar reprints from the1960s when
English had better status than in the intervening
years.
English tuition centers are
mushrooming in shop houses, schools and homes -
wherever space is available.
Newspapers
are promoting English by giving out free copies to
schools and businesses are donating millions of
dollars to adopt entire schools, picking up the
tab so that students can have an English
education.
"We should not be shy to say
English is a Malaysian language," Education
Minister Hishammuddin Hussein said recently while
launching a new scholarship program that provides
English language resources to 290 rural and
semi-urban schools.
English may have been
the language of the colonial masters, Hussein
said, "but it was also the language which our
founding fathers acquired, took to London, and
returned as masters of their own land".
"Forty-eight years on we should not be shy
to say English is a Malaysian language," he said,
giving the all-important official cue for the
drive to once again excel in a language that seems
to have thrived globally rather than declined in
the post-colonial phase.
Earlier, when
Malay nationalism was at a high and learning the
Malay language considered sacrosanct, such a
statement would have quickly ended the minister's
political career.
"The standard of written
and spoken English has deteriorated in the past 30
years," said Ramasamy Palanisamy, professor of
political science at the University Kebangsaan
Malaysia. "After the 1969 race riots [between
Malays and ethnic Chinese], Malaysia switched to
the Malay stream for schools and university in
1971. From then on English as a language
declined."
English continued to be taught
as a second language in rural Malaysia but its
quality declined because of official hostility,
the rise of Islam and poor teaching resources.
That climate has now reversed dramatically
and the study of English is nowadays being
actively promoted by officialdom and receiving a
matching response as well.
It all started
in 2002 when some Japanese investors told former
prime minister Mahathir Mohamad that many
Malaysian graduates were so poor in English that
they were simply unemployable. There were serious
communication problems. While Japanese factory
managers had learned English, Malaysian graduates
had not.
"You don't expect us to learn
Malay language to communicate with our workers,"
one Japanese manager famously asked of government
officials. "Even in China, the Chinese are rushing
to learn English."
But that is a situation
familiar across Asia where former British colonies
such as India are competitively attracting
international investors because of significant
numbers of English-proficient professionals even
with the shortcomings in terms of infrastructure
and conducive business environment.
In
Malaysia, about 20,000 graduates are estimated to
be unemployed because of poor communication skills
and most of them are from rural backgrounds. The
government is even spending millions of dollars to
retrain them in various industrial skills.
Rather than remain unemployed, many
graduates have begun to hide their degree
certificates and take lower-paying jobs for which
they are considered overqualified - such as with
the fire department.
Mahathir realized
that if the trend continued, Malaysia's position
as a vibrant, trading economy would be badly
affected. So as a technocrat and a believer in
social engineering, with a pro-Malay approach, he
decided on a fast-track scheme to bring English to
rural students.
And without careful
preparation and ignoring stiff, all-round
opposition, he announced that from 2003 onward all
schools must teach key subjects like science and
mathematics in English.
Opposition
lawmakers, education experts as well as Chinese
and Tamil language teachers warned that student
performance would drop dramatically if a switch
was made in such a sudden manner and without
planning.
They argued that teachers, who
had been teaching science and mathematics in
Malay, Mandarin and Tamil languages for more than
30 years, could not overnight begin to teach in
English.
Mahathir was both impatient and
adamant. He said modern technology, use of the
Internet and special teaching software would be
employed to make the overnight switch work.
"English has to be learned as a language,
it can't be acquired by learning science and
mathematics in English," said a school headmaster
then who had opposed the scheme and asked not to
be identified. "Mahathir's scheme, now into its
second year, is a mess."
As the experts
had predicted, the performance of rural Malay
students had dropped when they were forced to
switch to English as the medium of instruction in
science and mathematics. More Malays were not
making the grade to enter colleges, polytechnics
and universities largely because of the sudden
switch.
"It is an alien language and not
easily learnt by rural Malay students - you cannot
force people to learn," said the headmaster. "It
has got to be a gradual process."
The
current campaign to learn English seeks to repair
somewhat the damage caused by the earlier scheme,
by helping students learn the language in gradual
stages.
The semi-official New Straits
Times newspaper is leading the campaign under the
telling slogan, "Build Tomorrow's Malaysia, Learn
English, Adopt a Student".
A downside of
the infatuation is the arrival of foreigners,
tourists and others pretending to be English
language teaching experts.
"Teach English
on the colorful and exotic island of Borneo in
Malaysia," reads one Internet advertisement,
inviting foreigners to head to Malaysia to teach
English.
It goes on to say: "The
flamboyance of Malaysia is breathtaking. This is a
country where the sun shines, the sea is crystal
clear and there are endless coconut, banana and
palm trees! No qualifications required. Before you
go - you can enroll in a one-day intensive open
teacher, training day [optional] to help you teach
if you have no previous experience."
There
seems little concern for nuances such as the all
too-evident differences in American English and
the British variety, with which this former crown
colony is more familiar - though as a rapidly
receding memory.
For now it is a free for
all and rural Malays are too busy learning
"English as she is spoke" to worry about who is
doing the teaching.
